Anna University Regulation 2013 Information Technology (IT) CS6401 OS Notes for all 5 units are provided below. Download link for IT 4th SEM CS6401 Operating Systems Lecture Notes are listed down for students to make perfect utilization and score maximum marks with our study materials.
1.1 Introduction
An operating system acts as an intermediary between the user of a computer and the computer hardware. The purpose of an operating system is to provide an environment in which a user can execute programs in a convenient and efficient manner.
An operating system is a program that manages a computer’s hardware. It also provides a basis for application programs and acts as an intermediary between the computer user and the computer hardware. An amazing aspect of operating systems is how they vary in accomplishing these tasks. Mainframe operating systems are designed primarily to optimize utilization of hardware. Personal computer (PC) operating systems support complex games, business applications, and everything in between. Operating systems for mobile computers provide an environment in which a user can easily interface with the computer to execute programs. Thus, some operating systems are designed to be convenient, others to be efficient, and others to be some combination of the two.
1.2 Computer system overview
A computer system can be divided roughly into four components: the hardware, the operating system, the application programs, and the users (Figure 1.1). The hardware—the central processing unit (CPU), the memory, and the input/output (I/O) devices—provides the basic computing resources for the system. The application programs—such as word processors, spreadsheets, compilers, and Web browsers— define the ways in which these resources are used to solve users’ computing problems. The operating system controls the hardware and coordinates its use among the various application programs for the various users.
1.1.1 User View
The user’s view of the computer varies according to the interface being used. Most computer users sit in front of a PC, consisting of a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and system unit. Such a system is designed for one user to monopolize its resources. The goal is to maximize the work (or play) that the user is performing. In this case, the operating system is designed mostly for ease of use, with some attention paid to performance and none paid to resource utilization—how various hardware and software resources are shared.
Performance is, of course, important to the user; but such systems are optimized for the single-user experience rather than the requirements of multiple users.
1.1.2 System View
From the computer’s point of view, the operating system is the program most intimately involved with the hardware. In this context, we can view an operating system as a resource allocator. A computer system has many resources that may be required to solve a problem: CPU time, memory space, file-storage space, I/O devices, and so on. The operating system acts as the manager of these resources. Facing numerous and possibly conflicting requests for resources, the operating system must decide how to allocate them to specific programs and users so that it can operate the computer system efficiently and fairly. As we have seen, resource allocation is especially important where many users access the same mainframe or minicomputer.
1.3 Basic elements
A modern general-purpose computer system consists of one or more CPUs and a number of device controllers connected through a common bus that provides access to shared memory (Figure 1.2). Each device controller is in charge of a specific type of device (for example, disk drives, audio devices, or video displays). The CPU and the device controllers can execute in parallel, competing for memory cycles. To ensure orderly access to the shared memory, a memory controller synchronizes access to the memory.
For a computer to start running—for instance, when it is powered up or rebooted—it needs to have an initial program to run. This initial program, or bootstrap program, tends to be simple. Typically, it is stored within the computer hardware in read-only memory (ROM) or electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), known by the general term firmware. It initializes all aspects of the system, from CPU registers to device controllers to memory contents. The bootstrap program must know how to load the operating system and how to start executing that system. To accomplish this goal, the bootstrap program must locate the operating-system kernel and load it into memory. Once the kernel is loaded and executing, it can start providing services to the system and its users. Some services are provided outside of the kernel, by system programs that are loaded into memory at boot time to become system processes, or system daemons that run the entire time the kernel is running.
CS6401 OS Unit 1 notes – Download Here
CS6401 OS Unit 2 notes – Download Here
CS6401 OS Unit 3 notes – Download Here
CS6401 OS Unit 4 notes – Download Here
CS6401 OS Unit 5 notes – Download Here
If you require any other notes/study materials, you can comment in the below section.
Related Links
For CS6401 OS Previous Year Question Papers – Click here
For CS6401 OS Question Bank/2marks 16marks with answers – Click here
For CS6401 OS Important Questions/Answer Key – Click here
Search Terms
Anna University 4th SEM IT OS Lecture Notes
CS6401 Operating Systems Notes free download
Anna University IT OS Notes Regulation 2013
CS6401 Notes, OS Unit wise Lecture Notes – IT 4th Semester